"Nobody can hurt me without my permission." -Ghandi

9 days sober It starts with a cup of coffee. More specifically, it starts with twenty ounces of hundred-and-thirty degree coffee being shoved out of my hands and into my chest with such force that the flimsy plastic lid pops right off the cup, drenching me from collarbone to navel in liquid so hot that for half a second, all I can do is choke out, “Oh, holy fucking sh-shit!” I pinch the front of my now-soaked t-shirt and pull it forward, my shoulders hunched, trying to flinch away from the sopping, scalding material, but it’s no use. My skin feels like it’s on fire. My sunglasses are actually steaming up from the heat rising off my chest. Still, I’m not too distracted by the pain to miss the unmistakable sound of two people high-fiving each other behind my back. And I’m not stupid enough to think this was an accident. I turn in place very slowly, not wanting to slip on the coffee that has dripped from my body to the floor, and find myself watching the backs of two guys retreating down the hall. One of them is wearing a Varsity Track sweatshirt. Fucking Jack Thorne, what is his problem with me? “Oh my god, Garen. Are you okay?” says a voice to my right. I glance over at the speaker. It’s Annabelle, the redheaded choreographer from the Grease auditions. I’m not okay. I’m in more pain than I have been for months, probably since the fight with Travis in my dad’s study, when he punched me in the face to get the Glock away from me. The flesh on my chest might actually be blistering up, because it’s stinging so badly that I feel like my entire torso is pulsing. The wet drag of my t-shirt against my skin feels like someone is rubbing me with boiling sandpaper. It’s fucking awful. But even under the physical pain, I’m starting to feel an even worse pain—the sting of embarrassment. Everyone is staring at me. I’ve only just gotten out of homeroom, and I’m about to be late to AP Government, and my shirt is soaked, and all I want in the world is to go chase that idiot jock down and beat the shit out of him. Instead, I grimace at Annabelle and say, “I’m, um… Christ. This is really hot. And wet. And disgusting. Do you know if there’s anywhere around here where I can get a different shirt? Or, do the locker rooms in the gym have hand dryers so I can at least make this so I’m not dripping everywhere?” “I’ll get you another shirt, hang on two seconds,” she says, holding up a hand to signal that I shouldn’t move. Her eyes are raking the hall, then lighting up as she calls, “Hey, Ry! Come here for a second!” We are joined a few seconds later by Riley, from tech crew. He greets Annabelle, but before she can even say anything to him, he blinks at my chest and snorts. “You’re supposed to drink it, not wear it, man.” “Some track team douche has it out for me, and he attacked me with my own coffee. I’ve never felt so betrayed in my life. Except like, that time that I got addicted to all those drugs that had been really fun to do at first.” The numbness is fading now, replaced by more of that pulsing agony, so I don’t even feel bad when I whine, “All my favorite things keep turning against me.” “Well, maybe you should get better favorite things. Here—” Riley drops his messenger bag to the ground, carefully avoiding any of the coffee splatters, and strips off the graphic tee he’s wearing over a long-sleeved shirt. I have never been so thankful for the ridiculous number of layers that people from Connecticut always seem to be wearing. He straightens his ever-present, always-backwards baseball cap and says, “You should see if you can rinse off in the bathroom first, though, ‘cause otherwise it’s just gonna stick to you.” “Thank you,” I say, taking care to hold the fresh t-shirt between the tips of two fingers so I won’t get coffee all over that, too. There’s a bathroom at the end of the hall that is thankfully empty. Not like it would matter—I’m too annoyed and too comfortable with my physique to even bother going into one of the stalls to strip off my t-shirt. I wring it out over the sink, soak it under the water for a moment, and wring it out again. It’s still wet, and it still reeks of coffee, but I can’t do much better. I run a handful of paper towels under the faucet for a few seconds, planning to make a few quick swipes over my chest to wipe off most of the coffee—I take it black these days, so I thankfully don’t have to worry about any sugar or cream congealing on my skin. But when I glance up into the mirror over the sink, I’m suddenly unable to move. My entire chest is a bright, splotchy shade of red. Tentatively, I swipe the dampened towels over my skin, only to flinch away from the pain. The late bell for first period rings overhead. I grit my teeth, wipe away the rest of the coffee, and pull on Riley’s t-shirt. He’s not much thinner than me, but my arms must be a lot bigger, because the sleeves of the shirt bunch up a little around my biceps. Whatever, it’s not like I have time to worry about it. I stop by my locker to stuff the wet shirt onto the top shelf, then head to class to be berated for my lateness. I keep getting weird looks for the rest of the morning. At first, I assume it’s because people have heard about the coffee incident this morning, but when I walk into the classroom for trial law, I catch Travis blinking at my chest, looking completely bewildered. For the first time since Riley handed it to me, I actually bother to look down at the shirt. The First Baptist Church of Lakewood, Connecticut presents: ‘Summers with Scripture’ Bible Study, June 2002. Creating sin-free summer fun for God’s children since 1987! Between the event title and the slogan, there’s a picture of Jesus wearing wayfarers. What the actual fuck. At lunch time, I grab a sandwich and a bottle of iced tea, then scan the room until I find Riley, sitting with the rest of the drama club. I stalk up to him and say, “I really wish I had bothered to look at this shirt before you handed it to me, ‘cause I totally would have preferred the nasty, coffee-stained one. It took me until last period to figure out why the hell everyone has been staring at me all day.” Riley laughs delightedly. “You didn’t realize what it was? Wow, you’re really unobservant. I found it in a thrift store downtown a few years ago, and it was too awesome to pass up.” “Awesome? It’s awful.” “It has Jesus wearing sunglasses!” “I’m Jewish,” I say, somewhat hysterically, which only makes him laugh harder. To my surprise, Joss is the one to respond to that, though not to me. She turns to face Travis, who I have only just noticed is sitting next to her; guess he’s decided to continue his tradition of adopting a completely new group of friends the second he starts hooking up with someone new. After all, isn’t that what happened with him, Ben, and all my old friends? Joss says, “Is that how your parents met? Like, at synagogue or something?” I’m glad to see that Travis looks as confused as I feel. Brow furrowed, he says, “No…? I’m not Jewish, Joss.” She frowns back at him. “You’re not?” “No, I’m Catholic. Or, at least, I’m supposed to be, I don’t know. Why the hell would you think I’m Jewish?” he asks. Unable to stop myself, I say, “If this is because he’s circumcised, you should know that more than half the men in this country are, regardless of religion—” “Please stop discussing my penis at the lunch table,” Travis says tightly, but he doesn’t look at me or say anything to indicate that Joss wouldn’t know whether he’s circumcised or not. Meaning she’s seen it. Meaning they’ve probably screwed by now, in the week and a half since they first kissed. Oh. So, um… oh. Twisted into what hopefully looks like a mocking smile, my mouth is still moving of its own accord. “Why? You’ve got an awesome dick, dude, you should totally be proud—” “Moving on,” Joss speaks loudly over the rest of my sentence, “I wasn’t asking because of that. If you’re not Jewish, why do you wear a—” She cuts herself off abruptly, blinking at him. He licks his lips and pointedly does not meet her eyes. The silence makes no sense to the rest of the people sitting at—or, in my case, standing next to—the table. Seriously, why does he wear a… what? What Jewish thing could he possibly walk around wearing? A fucking yarmulke? And then I see it—a tiny glimpse of the thin gold chain, just visible under the edge of the collar of his t-shirt. “You’ll also need to hand over both lip rings, as I assume they have sharpened points for piercing. Any other jewelry you’re wearing, too,” Cheryl says. I’m not entirely clear on how to remove the lip rings—they seemed like a good idea at the time, a way to make me look a little tougher, a little harder. They’re supposed to be something that fucks me up a little, at least enough to make Travis stop glancing at my mouth like he wants nothing more than to kiss me every time he thinks I’m not looking. Figuring out how to remove than hadn’t been part of the original plan. I manage it, though, and drop them on the edge of the LRC’s searching table. If I wanted, I could probably try to smuggle my necklace in, but I could get caught, and they could confiscate it for good, and everything could be so much worse. I can’t risk losing this. I pluck it from the collar of my shirt and move to stand in front of Travis, who stares at the Star of David. I say, “You mind holding onto this? Kind of a family heirloom thing. My mom would kill me if I lost it.” I should have told him earlier. He should already know the story of this necklaces, of how my mom gave it to me right before I went away to boarding school, of the grandfather I never met, of the man who suffered so fucking much in that camp in Germany but still survived, still had the strength and dignity and grace to be proud of who he was when he got out. Travis should know these things about me, about my heritage, about my life. I wish I’d spent more time talking to him, less time trying to hurt him. It doesn’t get shoved into his pocket along with the stupid lighter. He takes the necklace from me and slips it over his head, tucking it down the front of his shirt. I’ve never been more thankful for his ability to understand which things are important without me having to say anything. Careful not to actually touch his skin—and he arches his neck to give me better access, oh god—I slip a finger beneath the collar of his shirt and hook it around the chain, drawing the necklace out. The Star of David pendant dangles right next to an engraved silver ring. The ring. The one I gave him, the one he practically threw at me after I came back to Lakewood and started terrorizing him, the one I had thought was left in the music room at school when I tried to disappear to Cleveland. The one he apparently bothered to get, and hold onto, and wear on my fucking chain every day since June. I don’t know what bothers me more: that he’s been quietly wearing my family heirloom under his t-shirt for all these months, or the fact that Joss has obviously gotten under the t-shirt to know this. The idea of my dead grandfather’s Star of David hanging off Travis’ throat, dangling down and knocking against Joss’ collarbone while he’s fucking her—it makes me want to die. Or, at the very least, vomit. Without bothering to ask permission—and why should I? It’s my fucking necklace—I slip the chain off over his head and drop it back over my own. After three and a half months of not wearing it, it feels strange to have the weight of it against my—Riley’s—shirt again. I move to put it back beneath the shirt, but Travis says, “Wait.” I freeze. He clears his throat. “Just the necklace. The ring’s mine.” My first instinct is to tell him to walk in front of a bus, because it’s not his. I bought it, and he gave it back, he didn’t want it anymore, and he doesn’t want me, so why should he get to walk around with something that I gave him as a symbol of my feelings for and devotion to him? That’s fucking stupid. I hesitate, but for once in my life, I’m not in the mood to make a scene. “Sorry. My mistake.” I undo the chain clasp, slide the ring off, and secure the necklace once more beneath my shirt. Travis is holding his hand out for the ring, but I still don’t think I can touch him, so I set it down on the table in front of him. Out of what I can only assume to be habit, he slides it onto the ring finger of his left hand. It’s the same place it sat for months, but it made sense then. It was supposed to be a goddamn promise ring, a fucking engagement ring back then. Now, it’s just his selfish little souvenir of a relationship he doesn’t want anymore. I’m not sure he’s looking at me, but he must be, because when I give a jerky shake of my head, he sighs and switches it to the ring finger of his right hand instead. That’s better. It’s still not good, but it’s better. I smile as brightly as I can and say, “Well, it’s been a blast and a half catching up with you guys. I’ll see you at rehearsal.” “Hang on,” Annabelle says, frowning at me as I turn to go. “Where are you going?” I blink at her. “Um, the music room? That’s where I hang out during my lunch period.” “Why?” John asks. “I don’t know. I just do,” I say, because I have no friends and don’t want to sit alone in here where people can mock me for it sounds lame. “That’s dumb. Sit with us,” Miranda orders. It’s impossible to miss the glare exchanged when Joss kicks her under the table. I don’t care if it’s my pride talking—I’d rather eat every meal alone for the rest of my life than accept a pity invitation from a bunch of people who already think I’m a pathetic junkie. I shake my head and offer her a polite smile. “Thanks, but I’m just gonna go. I’ll see you around.” I manage to make it exactly eight steps before a pair of hands collides hard with my shoulder blades, sending me flying into the wall next to the cafeteria doors. I spin around and—of fucking course—find myself looking right at Jack Thorne. Jack, who I’ve never actually even met, but who seems to be so goddamn offended by my existence that he can’t stop himself from making comments about me, or pouring scalding coffee on me, or shoving me into walls. I don’t consider myself a violent person, but I don’t consider myself a weak person, either; if someone hits me, I hit back. Well. With a few minor, masochistic exceptions. My hand is already tightening into a fist, but before I can even pull it back, Jack says, “Don’t tell me you’re actually stupid enough to assault a minor in a school building. I mean, aren’t you like, nineteen already?” I freeze. He’s right—not about me being nineteen, but about the fact that legally, I’d be totally fucked if I beat up a seventeen-year-old, especially while on school grounds. It doesn’t matter if he’s provoking me, or if he has already taken the first thing. Technically, he’s still a kid, and I’m an adult. It’s the sort of distinction I’m sure most high schoolers would love to gloat over, but right now, it’s a strangle-hold. All of the assholes who have decided to dislike me for reasons that have nothing to do with them have finally found the loophole; they have finally realized that, as long as no teachers catch them at it, they can do whatever they want to me, and I can’t hit them back, unless I’m interested in going to prison. Jack must see the gears turning in my head, because he sneers at me. A moment later, that sneer is wiped away when someone else joins our confrontation and says, “He’s eighteen, but I’m not. I’m still just young enough to punch you in the face and get away with it.” “Fuck off, McCall,” Jack orders. As much as I would rather get hit by a train than agree with him, I say, “Travis, go away. I’m fine.” Travis ignores us both and says, “Seriously, Jack, this is pathetic even by your standards. Attacking somebody who you know can’t hit back without getting arrested? Is that the only way you think you can win a fight?” “Dunno. Managed to give you a pretty decent beatdown a few weeks ago, didn’t I?” Jack retorts. Travis snorts. “ ‘A beatdown’? Really? You punched me once because I said you had a small dick, and I wasn’t even facing you at the time. It was a bitch move. Weird, it’s starting to seem like that’s all you’re capable of. I’m serious, though. Leave Garen alone.” I can’t believe he’s actually dumb enough to think he’s helping. He’s not helping. I’m surrounded by fucking sharks, and he’s trying so hard to strong-arm me into the boat that he doesn’t realize he’s just spilling more of my blood in the water. I know how guys like Jack work, because I used to be dangerously close to being a guy like Jack. People like him are constantly looking for weakness in others, they’re looking for signs that someone needs protection, and the second that protection is gone, they attack. Unless Travis is planning to hire me a fucking bodyguard—a young one, too, one who can actually hit all the people I’m too old to beat up on—he’s just making me more of a target. “Travis,” I say through gritted teeth, “I’m not joking. Go back to your table and sit the fuck down.” “Come on, McCall. Listen to your girlfriend,” Jack says. God, I want to punch him. “Right, so you can go back to beating on someone who’d be screwed if he tried to defend himself? Not likely,” Travis says. For someone who claims he can’t be friends with me anymore, for someone who agreed not to speak to me anymore, he’s doing a remarkable impression of someone who gives a shit about me. It’s annoying as hell, and it’s not what I need. Not from him. Not right now. I duck down so that my clavicle catches him in the groin hard enough to silence him, then tighten my arm around the back of his legs, straightening up and flinging all hundred and forty pounds of him over my shoulder. He is understandably bewildered enough to stop arguing with Jack, which gives me just enough time to stride back over to the table where he had been sitting and dump him unceremoniously into his vacated seat. He’s heavier than he looks, because there’s now a kink in my shoulder, but I ignore it in favor of leaning down and snapping, “When I told you to go sit down, it wasn’t a fucking suggestion, dude. It was an order. And now you’ve gone and fucked everything up, and I’m going to have to pay the price for it, so thanks a lot.” “Excuse me?” he hisses. “Thorne’s an idiot, and he’s not going to stop going after you unless somebody makes him. This is not an ‘ignore it and maybe it will go away’ situation. I was trying to help—” “—I don’t care what you were trying to do. The last thing I need is to have people think that I need my scrawny, seventeen-year-old ex-boyfriend trying to defend me. So, shut up and go back to fingerbanging your new girlfriend under the lunch table, or whatever the fuck you were doing ten minutes ago, before you decided to play the hero. Remember, for the next however-many months it takes for that divorce to be finalized, you’re my kid brother, and I don’t need your help, alright? Leave me alone.” This time, nobody tries to stop me from leaving the room. 10 days sober On Friday, I wake to the noise of my phone chiming, which is a little surprising, considering there are exactly three people who text me, and they’re all college students, so none of them should even be awake yet. It’s a text from an unknown number; If your life still sucks, I’m still willing to listen to you whine about it. Drinks tonight? This is Stohler, the girl whose couch you passed out on last week. Oh, god. I’d nearly forgotten about giving her my number. It seems like a sincere enough offer, even if it’s not the healthiest one. I text back, Coffee instead of drinks okay with you? It’s only another five minutes before I get a reply. Starbucks on Chapel St. @ 7:30pm. I send back a simple see you then so she knows I’ve received her message, add her number to my contacts list, then drop my phone back on the nightstand. I hadn’t been asleep asleep. Not really. I’d been dozing, I guess, and I’m still hungry for unconsciousness, but I can tell I won’t be able to get back into that blissful, dream-filled state that has been evading me for months now. Grumbling, I roll myself off the edge of my bed and lie motionless, facedown on the floor for several minutes before I can summon up the motivation to start my morning exercise. The too-early text means I’m ready for school at six fifty instead of the usual seven thirty. When I eventually make my way upstairs, I’m vaguely surprised to see that Dad is sitting at the kitchen table, reading through some glossy papers—they might be brochures—and drinking a cup of coffee. He looks up when I enter, then smiles too widely and gestures to the seat across from him. “Good morning. You should sit down. I’d like to talk to you for a minute, if you have time.” I’m tempted to lie and say I’m late, but he knows my schoolday doesn’t start until eight o’clock. I grab the half-full, lukewarm coffee pot off the burner and sit down with it, popping the lid off so that I can take a sip straight from the pot. Dad rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t tell me to get a cup or be more civilized, which must mean that something is up. Choosing my words carefully, I say, “Did I do something wrong?” “Not at all,” he says. “It’s just that, well… September’s almost over.” I blink and agree, “Yes, it is,” because, well, it’s getting close. Today is the—I check my cell phone—twenty-second, so there’s only a week and a few days left. “I think it’s about time we had The Talk.” “Uh, Dad? I really hate to tell you this, but you’re like, four years and twenty-something guys too late,” I say. “Besides, you already gave me hetero version of The Talk when I was like, ten, and that turned out to be totally useless. But don’t worry, because even though you raised me with a thoroughly lacking understanding of the schematics of anal sex, you did raise me to be an inquisitive and experimental young man, so I’ve spent the better part of my high school career figuring it out on my own—” “I meant The Talk about college.” Oh wow, that’s so much worse than having to sit through another sex talk. Talking about my dick is something I’m completely comfortable with, even if I’m talking to my own parents. Talking about some hypothetical future where people keep threatening me with adulthood? Not so much. There doesn’t seem to be much point in saying, I’ve never given it much thought, because I never thought I’d make it to eighteen without dying of an overdose or something. Instead, I take another long swig from the coffee pot and say, “Okay. Let’s talk about it.” “Have you given any thought to what schools you might apply to? Or, at least, what you might want to study?” Dad asks. I shrug. “Not really.” “Garen,” he says warningly. “I’ve tried to tell you this before, and you never listen to me. You’re eighteen, it’s time to start thinking about your future.” I barely restrain an eyeroll. “I know, Dad, but thinking about my future isn’t the same thing as figuring any of it out. I mean, it’s not like I’m that good at anything except guitar, and setting shit on fire, and giving blowjobs. And I think we’d both be kidding ourselves if we pretended to think my plan was ever to do anything besides hang around here, mooching off you and Mom until you get bored of it and kick me out again. Then I can swallow my dignity and begin an illustrious career as a barista, or a music store clerk, or a… I don’t fucking know, a stripper? A go-go boy? I’ve got nothing to offer the world except a personality disorder and a crazy sick body. It’s not like anyone ever said, ‘Garen Anderson, now there’s a kid who’s gonna go far in life.’” “I said that,” Dad says mildly. “Your mother has always said that. I’m not sure why you try to pretend that you’re not smart, or that you don’t have the ability to do anything you set your mind to.” “I know, Dad. I should be all I can be. And apparently what I chose to be is a drug addict who got expelled from Lakewood High School,” I say. “Do you even realize how embarrassing that is? You’ve met my Patton friends. You know what they’re like. The fact that I got kicked out of school was lame enough, but getting kicked out of public school? It isn’t as if colleges are going to be lining up to offer me admission after that.” “Garen,” Dad says, and now it sounds a little like a plea. I very purposefully avoid his eyes. He presses on, “I know that you say that you don’t care about your schoolwork, but I’m also the person who they send your report cards to, so I know that that’s bullshit. Sure, you got into trouble a lot while you were at Patton, and it’s possible that you are now actively trying to get detention at Lakewood, but you had a three point four GPA.” “It’s lower at LHS,” I say, trying to shrug it off. He doesn’t let me. “You don’t know that for sure. This fall’s grades have barely begun, but you only have one semester of grades from LHS. Last fall, you were still doing well. You may have gone down to a three point oh, but that’s still a solid average. And your SAT scores were—” “Didn’t we agree to never talk about those?” I interrupt. “No, you agreed that you didn’t want to talk about those. You and your idiot self had that agreement, right after the scores came out during your junior year. Your mother and I agreed that we were insanely proud of you, and that you were acting like a middle-schooler for being so embarrassed to have done well. You did better than any of your friends—” “So? I test well. That doesn’t mean anything.” “You did better than Travis,” Dad says. He must realize that that’s gotten my attention, because he continues, “He took them twice, once in December and again in March. His highest combined score was still only a twenty-one forty. Over a million people take that test every year, and do you want to know how many of them get the score you got? About twenty.” Still craving my caffeine but unwilling to continue this conversation any longer, I stand up and stomp over to the cabinet to get a travel mug. Only half the coffee in the pot fits into it. I screw the cap on, chug the rest of what’s left, and dump the pot into the sink. “Yeah, Dad, I get it. I’m a special snowflake, I did so well, go me. It’s not that big of a deal.” “You got a perfect score on the SATs on your first try, Garen. That’s a pretty big deal.” “We’re not talking about this,” I repeat loudly. The truth is, even I was surprised by those scores. I had done well on the PSATs the year before, and I hadn’t expected the SATs to be any different. I’ve always tested well; my stunning ability to not give the tiniest amount of shit about my scores means I’m relaxed enough to be one of the highest scorers on almost any standardized test I’ve ever taken. Still, I had never anticipated a perfect score. When the scores had shown up in my Patton dorm mailbox, I had been so fucking confused by them that I’d called the company in charge of scoring to confirm that there wasn’t a mistake. There hadn’t been, but it’s not even really something to be proud of. Sure, I got most of the questions right on my own, but there were some that I guessed on, some I know I lucked out on. I should’ve just shredded those scores the second they arrived in the mail. That way, I wouldn’t have to hear about them for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t have to have them hanging over my head as proof that all those you could go so far in life if you would just pick a career goal and smoke less pot lectures were true. I wouldn’t have to feel so fucking guilty that I have oh my god, so much potential, but all I really want to do is hang out with my friends and play guitar in a rock band. You can’t disappoint people if they don’t realize you’re capable of anything decent. They can only feel let down if you get their hopes up in the first place. Dad hurries after me to stand in front of the door to the basement, blocking my escape. “Five schools. That’s all I’m asking. Pick any five schools, send in your applications and transcripts, and we won’t talk about this again until the spring, when you’ve gotten all your responses. Then we can—” “Fine!” I burst out, squeezing past him and storming down into the basement. I retrieve my backpack from next to the couch and head back upstairs, because I don’t care if it’s still only seven o’clock—I am not going to hang around here and let my dad delude himself into thinking any college would want a formerly-expelled addict in their midst. At the top of the stairs, Dad corners me again and stuffs the glossy brochures from the table into my backpack. “I’ve been looking at some schools. At least read the pamphlets. Give it some thought, talk to your school counselor—you already told me that seniors are required to go to informational sessions—” “Informational session. Singular. A one-on-one meeting, and then one of the events later in the semester. There are going to be a bunch of gay little mixers and informational fairs where people from colleges all over the country come and try to pimp out their schools. But that’s not until October,” I argue. “And October isn’t that far away,” Dad says, a note of finality in his voice. “I’m not screwing around, Garen, and you shouldn’t be either. Read the brochures. Look at some colleges. Pick five. We’ll talk in the spring. Now go to school.” I do, but I’m not fucking happy about it. Stohler is already waiting at a table near the windows when I arrive at Starbucks that evening. She hasn’t looked up from her phone, but she’s somehow aware of my presence from the second I enter the shop, because she raises a hand and wiggles her fingers at me in greeting. I echo the gesture, but stop at the counter to buy myself two large cups of coffee before I join her. Her long blond hair is scraped back into a tight, conservative French braid, but her makeup is… drastic? Pronounced? I’m not sure if there’s a polite way of saying there’s glitter everywhere and she’s wearing more heavy black eyeliner than Ben and why are her eyelashes so long and fake-looking and that is some really fucking pink lipstick. It’s such a contrast to her torn jeans and slinky black tank top that for a long while, I just blink at her, trying to figure it out. “How are you?” she asks without preamble, the moment I’m seated. “Fine, I guess. You?” Spine poker-straight, she leans her elbows on the table and steeples her fingers together, chin just resting atop her fingertips. “Can’t complain. But we’re not here to talk about me. We’re here so you can amuse me with what a shitshow your life is.” “Alright, there’s something I need to tell you, before I bother to explain anything else about my life. Because right now, this is the most important thing, and if you don’t understand this, you won’t understand anything else I could tell you. Is that okay?” I say. She raises her chin just enough to give a vague flick of her fingers before resuming her previous position. I assume this is her way of telling me to continue, so I take a steadying breath and say, “I’m in recovery.” She arches an eyebrow. “For?” “I’m in recovery for a drug addiction,” I amend. When she doesn’t move, I continue, “I, um… I spent most of last spring alternating between coke binges and whiskey blackouts and zoning out on Vicodin. It wasn’t as much fun as it sounds. In June, I had a nervous breakdown and ended up in rehab. The night you met me, I was supposed to be ninety-two days sober, but obviously, I relapsed. I went back into treatment last week, and now I’m ten days sober. You need to know that part, alright? I’m not—I can’t drink anymore. Ever. And, you know, drugs, whatever. I mean, I still smoke—cigarettes, not pot, but I guess I could maybe get away with smoking a little of that if I wanted to, since it’s not something I ever had to worry about. But for the most part, all the fun vices? I don’t do them anymore. I can’t. And from the very little I know about you, you drink, and I’m not sure how big of a part of your life that is, so if you want to end this little encounter right now, that’s fine. But—” “You’re an idiot,” she interrupts. “I don’t have any problem with you being sober, and if you need help, it’s good that you’re getting it.” “Okay,” I say, somewhat stunned. It’s not supposed to be that easy, is it? But she’s looking at me expectantly, and if I’m going to have to explain this, I might as well give her some entertainment, so I warn, “Most of the rest of this story involves my penis.” “I’d be disappointed if it didn’t,” she obliges. I grin, but I’m not entirely sure where I can start. Finally, I say, “This isn’t—look, do you have a pen? It’ll be a lot easier if you just let me show you.” “I might have some eyeliner?” she says, digging into her purse. When she surfaces with a stick of creamy black eye pencil, I pluck it from her fingers and scribble the word me on the center of one of the napkins. I pause, then add Alex and Ben’s names to the right. “Alright,” I begin. “Wanna go chronologically? Yeah, we’ll go chronologically. Something like six years ago, Alex and Ben became best friends. I think they met at school? I don’t know. Whatever. Sometimes, Alex gets drunk and kisses Ben, who’s Edge, so he doesn’t drink at all. Ben’s gay, he’s been out since he was fourteen, but up until recently, Alex has been claiming to be straight. Alex is in love with Ben, but Ben is pretty much the only person who doesn’t know this. He thinks of him as a brother.” Stohler raises her eyebrows and takes a sip of her coffee. “Pseudo-incest. Depressing.” I throw my head back and laugh. “You have no idea how much worse the pseudo-incest is going to get, believe me. But alright, that’s them.” I draw a line between their names. “Four years ago, my parents sent me off to an all-boys, military boarding school—” “Of course they did,” Stohler says, grinning. “God, no wonder I ended up meeting you in a gay bar. I make a face at her, but say, “I know, right? Anyway, that’s how I met James.” I add his name above my own. “We were roommates, we became best buds, and when I was fifteen and he was fourteen, we lost our virginities to each other.” Another line connecting our names. “We spent the next few years sleeping together and… I don’t know, I guess it was like we were dating? Everybody thought we were, because we were so close, but my first boyfriend was actually a guy named Dave.” I add his name near Jamie’s, then connect it to mine. “He, uh… I’m not going to get into it too much, because it still bothers me to talk about it, but he was an asshole. And he had a temper.” “A screaming temper or a beating temper?” Stohler asks. I wince. “Both? I-I know it’s, look, I’m not somebody’s bitch, alright? I can handle myself. But he was—” “Garen,” she interrupts, reaching across the table to give me a hard flick to the wrist. She’s clearly not used to trying to comfort people, if that’s her version of a reassuring gesture. “You said you don’t want to talk about it, so move on. I’m not going to make you traumatize yourself or whatever.” It’s one of the only times someone has ever told me it’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it and actually meant it. It’s the first time I haven’t still felt an obligation to explain myself. To show my appreciation, I offer Stohler a very small smile. She rolls her eyes, gestures to the napkin and says, “Come on. Add some more names to your slut web.” I grin and duck back over the napkin. “Okay. So, after Dave and I broke up, I… well, let’s just say I got really fucking popular at school.” I scribble every dude @ Patton onto the napkin between my name and Jamie’s, then connect myself to it. Stohler snickers. “And, alright, let’s just say that Jamie was already pretty popular at that point, yeah?” I connect his name to the same group. “Now… there’s only one other name that really needs to be here. And that’s going to make things so much more complicated, alright? So you need to swear you’re not about to judge me.” “I will swear no such thing.” “Stohls, come on, this part is really weird, and if—” “No, I’m pretty sure the weird part is right here,” she says, reaching over to tap the every dude part. Some of the eyeliner smears off onto her fingertip; she glowers at it, then rubs it off onto my sleeve. “Anyway, how much weirder can it get?” “I should probably mention that I’m actually from Cleveland, Ohio. That’s where I lived up until I went to boarding school in New York. I moved to Connecticut last fall, because my dad decided to get a house with his girlfriend, Evelyn. And her daughter, Bree. And uh, her son. Travis.” I print Travis’ name below mine. “Oh dear god,” Stohler says, but her grin is so wide it looks like it might split her face in half. “Oh, god, please don’t draw that line.” I admit, “It’s not getting drawn yet, but it’s gonna get drawn in a minute.” “Man, that is so fucked up,” she says gleefully. “What is wrong with you, dude?” “So many things. But first—” I draw a quick slash from my name to Ben’s, “—Ben was the first person I met when I moved to Lakewood, which was great for me, because he’s honestly one of the best friends anyone could ever ask for. It was also great for me because we have a lot in common. Namely, we both like music, we both like when he cooks me delicious meals, and we both like when I fuck him so hard he can feel it for a week after.” A man in a suit at the next table looks around at me, bewildered, then stands up and moves to another table. Stohler pauses to sneer at him before asking me, “Hang on, why haven’t you connected this Travis guy in yet? Is he going to bang you or Ben?” “You’re jumping ahead in the story,” I say fiercely. “So, both, then?” “God, shut up.” I jab at the line between me and Ben. “So, yes, Ben and I slept together. And it was good—good enough that we’d probably still be sleeping together, if Halloween hadn’t happened. Because last Halloween, I went to a party with Ben and Alex, and a mysterious gentleman in a mask started hitting on me. I was wearing a mask, too, but apparently my ass is just that fantastic that he was willing to take the chance that I’d be a troll in the facial region. I followed him outside and kissed him, but then he spoke, and even though he still had the mask on, I realized it was—dun dun dun! — Travis, dad’s girlfriend’s son, who I’d been totally trying to put the moves on for like, two weeks at that point. He didn’t realize it until he came home later, and he came into my bedroom and saw me in the costume—” “Nope,” Stohler says, shaking her head vigorously. “Nope, this is bullshit. Seriously, masked men at a Halloween party? You didn’t figure out each other’s identities even though you were making out with each other? This isn’t your life, this is an episode of Gossip Girl. Literally, I think they’ve actually had this story line before.” “It’s going to get so much worse, Stohler, please just let me finish the story,” I say loudly. We’re both having way too much fun with this, which is kind of surprising. It’s been so long since I found any of this funny, mostly because it’s been ruining my life for so long. Still, I connect my name to Travis’ and say, “So, yeah, Travis and I started secretly dating each other. At times, it was great. He’s such an awesome guy—he’s smart, he’s sweet, he’s fuckin’ gorgeous. But then, other times, it was totally fucked. Like—I shit you not—the first night we slept together? Which, incidentally, was the first time he slept with anyone. Yeah, that was the night that my dad and his mom—” “Don’t say it.” “—yep, got engaged.” “Oh god, this story just keeps getting worse,” she groans. “So, he and I were doing, you know, whatever it was we were doing. And that lasted up until January. Now may be an appropriate time—if any part of this is appropriate—to mention that… alright, I sometimes get a little bit carried away with myself, I guess, because I sort of asked him to marry me?” Stohler stares at me, eyebrows stretched up towards her hairline. “You proposed to your own stepbrother.” “Well, he wasn’t my stepbrother yet.” “And you were both eighteen?” I smile sheepishly. “No, we were both seventeen. Look, it was like, a hypothetical engagement, alright? I didn’t mean ‘will you marry me right now,’ I meant ‘will you marry me someday.’ Anyway, he’s just as weird, so he said yes. And the next morning was the day that his older sister walked in on us in bed together.” “Shit,” Stohler is unable to stop herself from saying. “Needless to say, our parents became aware of what was going on. And I’ve… never exactly been a great son. My parents tell me I’m awesome, but they have to, because they’re my parents. I’m their only kid, and they don’t want to believe they screwed up as badly as evidence would dictate. But I guess boning my future stepbrother was the last straw, because my dad kicked me out.” “Shit,” she repeats. I shrug and dip my fingers beneath the collar of my shirt to extract the Star of David, pressing each of its points into my fingertip over and over, just for something to do. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t that bad. I mean…” I sigh. “I broke up with Travis. I didn’t have anywhere in Connecticut where I could really go—my mom lives in Manhattan, and I knew that I’d head there before anywhere else, and I couldn’t take him with me. His mom’s a total homophobe, and she’d hate me even if I hadn’t fucked her son, so I have no doubt she would have called the cops and reported me for kidnapping. And… well, the thing about Travis is this: he shines so brightly that sometimes, it’s hard to look right at him, you know? He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and he’s passionate about his goals in life, and he’s so wonderful, so perfect, so young. And I just sort of… let life happen to me. I’m not a total fuck-up; I get pretty good grades, I aced my SATs, I’ve never technically been arrested. I play guitar, I sing, so I guess I’m talented, or whatever. But I get into trouble a lot. I get into fights. And I do—or, I used to do a lot of drugs. Not necessarily while I was living in Lakewood, but before that. And no matter how much I wanted to keep Travis, I knew he deserved better than what I was capable of giving him. So, I left. Without him.” Without explaining herself but making a gesture for me to remain seated, Stohler stands up and walks over to the counter. I watch in silence as she buys another coffee, but instead of returning to her seat, she heads for the door, beckoning me after her. I follow her out onto the sidewalk; she taps two cigarettes out of the pack from her purse, lights them both, and hands me one. She gestures for me to continue—she’s a very non-verbal person, apparently—and I suck in a drag before saying, “I went to New York. First, I stayed with my mom—man, you should’ve heard the phone calls she and my dad had those first few days. They’ve only been divorced for like, three and a half years, so I guess they both still have a lot of… issues with each other. Anyway, by the time I even got to her apartment, Dad had cooled off enough that he wanted me to come home, but I guess Ev kept freaking out over the idea of me being in the house with the son she claims I ‘took advantage of.’ That fucking sucked. I couldn’t put up with being in the apartment when all I ever heard was my parents on the phone, talking all about the boy I was in love with, the one I’d just left. My mom agreed to let me go crash with James at Patton—my old school. And I stayed there until—oh, hang on.” I hand her the cigarette and dart back into the coffee shop to snatch up the napkin and eyeliner I’d left on the table. When I come back outside, Stohler says, “What, another line?” “Two more lines. Alright,” I say, uncapping the eyeliner. “There was apparently a party about a month after I left, and at said party, Alex—” I poke his name with the tip of the eyeliner, then drag a line over to Travis’ name, “—hooked up with Travis.” “Wait, I thought you said Alex only recently admitted that he’s not straight,” Stohler says when I draw the next line. I nod. “Yeah, I didn’t say it made sense. But that happened, and then like, a week later, Travis started dating Ben.” Stohler blinks. I nod again. “Yep. That’s the same face I made when I found out.” “I don’t—were they friends?” “Nope.” “Did they even know each other?” “Barely.” I pause, smirk, and pluck my cigarette from her fingers again. “That’s sort of par for the course with Travis. More on that in a minute. But whatever. They started dating. And I’m selfish as fuck, so when I found out, I came back. That was on the day of the wedding.” Stohler leans back against the building and rolls her eyes towards the sky. “Of course it was.” “The next night was the first time in months that I did coke. I thought it would be a nice distraction, and it was. It made me feel so blissfully, beautifully numb. I—maybe if it had stayed as that, I could have been okay, but I tried to—I still needed a distraction,” I say, a little bit desperately now. This is where it’s going to get really fucked, and for reasons I’m not entirely clear on, it’s so important to me that Stohler not be scared off by what I’m going to tell her. I like Stohler, she seems like such an awesome chick, and if these parts of the story are creepy enough to send her away, it’ll be just like I’m doing them all over again. I lick my lips, tap my finger against Dave’s name on the napkin, and say, “Remember him?” “The guy with the temper?” I nod. “After I came back to Connecticut, I looked him up. He goes to school here. Here here—” “Starbucks?” “Yale, you asshole. He goes to Yale. I looked him up, and I asked him to get back together, and again, I really don’t want to get into the finer points, but it ended… badly.” Stohler is quiet. Her cigarette has burned down to nothing; she stubs out what’s left and lights another. “How badly?” I close my eyes for a moment and rest my head against the side of the building. “I ended up in a coma. Not a long one, or whatever. Just a day. I think my body just shut down, because I couldn’t handle—I had a concussion. Two cracked ribs. Three broken fingers. A broken leg.” “Fuck,” she mutters, smoothing her free hand over her braid and avoiding my eyes. “Travis was the one who found me,” I say in little more than a whisper. “I don’t remember it, I wasn’t even conscious, but he found me. A-And the doctors uh, they put me on a lot of painkillers. I’m… sort of an instant gratification kind of guy. And pills work faster if you crush them up and snort them, instead of swallowing them. So, that’s what I started doing, and I was drinking a lot, and I started doing way more blow. My parents made me take out a restraining order against Dave, even though I wouldn’t file assault charges, but that just meant that I was… fuck, I was so lonely. Even though he was beating me up all the time, at least he was there, you know? At least I had a warm body in my bed with me, at least I had someone telling me he loved me. And when I lost even that, I couldn’t handle it, so I was using a lot more.” “Is that when you decided to go to rehab?” Stohler asks. I shake my head and say carefully, “No. First, my stepmom sat me down and told me how worthless I was, and how I was ruining everyone’s lives by sticking around, and how Travis would never love me again because I had become a disgusting little monster. And then I went to New York and let my dealer fuck me in exchange for a line of coke. And then I tried to disappear to Ohio, but Ben—” I tap his name, “—came after me, and he dragged me back, and when we got coffee at a highway rest stop, I sucked off this random guy for more drugs, and Ben flipped out on the guy, and he ended up beating the shit out of the guy, but he kind of got his ass kicked, too. And then, when I got back to Lakewood, I got out my father’s gun so that I could kill myself, and Travis had to fight to get it away from me. And then I decided to go to rehab.” For several lengthy minutes, Stohler and I blink at each other in silence, each of us occasionally taking a drag from our cigarettes. Eventually, she stretches out a very tentative hand and curls it over my shoulder, squeezing tight for about half a second before she retreats. I offer her a half-smile. Neither of us is as good at this as we should be. The story isn’t over, but it’s getting kind of dark, and I’m getting tired of talking. I pull out the eyeliner again and start adding names and lines, “Anyway, I was fine, up until last week, when I saw Travis kissing this girl, Joss. It’s not that I expected him to wait for me forever—” “—except for how you probably secretly did—” “Except for how I did, yeah. Anyway, that’s what led up to me going to that club the night we met. Things were still pretty fucked up the next day—I guess I sort of went on a drinking binge. Part of that binge involved me trying to distract myself by having sex with Alex. Which turned out to be even worse than it originally seemed, because a few days ago, I found out that apparently—despite all logic dictating that this would be the dumbest thing ever—Alex and James? This James?” I point to the name. “Yeah. They’ve been fucking for like, months. I didn’t even know they knew each other. But I guess they met at my dad’s wedding, and started boning while I was in the hospital in the spring, and so… I dunno. That happened.” Stohler plucks the napkin from my fingers and peers down at it. “I guess now all we need is to have your friend James fuck Travis and Ben, and then that’s pretty much everybody, isn’t it?” “God, I think I’d kill myself if that happened,” I groan, and she laughs. I sigh. “Tell me life gets easier after high school.” “Life gets easier after high school,” she parrots back. She rolls her eyes and adds, “Except for how it doesn’t. Well… that depends on your definition of ‘easier.’ I mean, it’s sure as hell not what I expected life would be like.” “Do you go to college?” “No, I work,” she says. She pauses, stubs out her cigarette, and lights a third. She admits, “I’m sort of a dancer.” “Oh?” I say, because whenever someone says they’re ‘sort of a dancer,’ what they really mean is that they’re a stripper. I guess that at least explains the makeup, even if it doesn’t explain the hair. Stohler seems to realize I’ve understood this, because she smirks at me. “Look, I know it’s a shitty job, but it pays my rent. Besides, I hate to break it to you, Mr. I-Wanna-Be-A-Rockstar, but jobs in the arts? Really not that easy to come by. I used to want to be a dancer dancer. I went to school for it and everything; I’ve been doing ballet, jazz, and contemporary dance since I could walk. But I graduated from college a year ago, and it was so much harder to find dance work than I ever thought it would be. It costs a lot of money to live anywhere, and most regular jobs wanted people with regular degrees, so I eventually realized that using my bangin’ body and ridiculous flexibility to pay my bills would be the most practical solution. I make bank, and I don’t particularly hate my job, but I get that a lot of people have an issue with—let’s call a spade a spade—people who do sex work. So, if you’re going to be a dick about what I do, get that out of your system right now so that I can walk out.” “Stohler, I’m a fucking trust fund kid. I’ve never had a legitimate job, my parents have paid for everything I own, and yet I still have been known to suck people off for money to fund my drug habit. I really don’t think I’m in any position to judge you for what you do,” I say. She snorts. “Yeah, you really—oh, fuck.” She digs her cell phone out of her pocket to check the time, then smashes her cigarette out against the sole of her shoe. “I’m about to be late for work.” “Dude, it’s like, not even nine o’clock,” I say, frowning. “I know, but I start work at nine. Nine to five, actually ,” she says, and a pair of dimples appear with her smile. I shadow her to her car, a beat-up but still pretty sexy Mustang. She flings her purse into the backseat, then surfaces with a can of hairspray, which she thrusts into my hands. I watch her tug the elastic from the end of her hair and carefully unwind the braid. She flips her head upside down, sprays it with an incredibly impressive amount of hairspray, then throws her head back again, shaking out her wild blond waves. Bam. Instant sex appeal. I can’t help but grin at the transformation.If there’s one thing I can understand in this world, it’s the importance of hair products in the creation of a sex god. Or, goddess, as the case may be. When she realizes that I’m watching her, Stohler exaggerates a wink at me and rounds the car to slip into the driver’s seat. She leans over to wind down the passenger window, and I duck into it, bracing my elbows on it as she says to me, “Thanks for telling me your entire life story.” “Life story? Woman, that was just one year. We’d have to get together again, if you wanted to hear the rest of my life. Possibly get together more than once.” She frowns down at the steering wheel and says, “Well. I mean, we could, if you wanted.” “Are you asking me to be your friend?” I say, grinning slyly at her. “Don’t be gross,” she says immediately. Then, after a beat, “I told you. I don’t really do the friend thing.” I shrug. “Neither do I. Not well, at least. And certainly not with people I have no designs on.” “I’ll be a new and exciting challenge for you, then,” she says. “You can see what wins out: your compulsion to sleep with every single one of your friends, or your revulsion with female anatomy.” “Quite the dilemma,” I agree. I lean out of the car and rap my knuckles in the roof. “You’re going to be late for work. I’ll text you sometime, yeah?” Another acknowledging flick of the fingers, and then she’s pulling out of the parking space. She makes it halfway down the block before I text her, remind me to tell you about the FLAMING 15year old school play director who wants to S my D. Apparently, Stohler has no objection to texting while driving, because just inside of a minute later, she responds, The idea of hearing about any more of your gentleman callers both excites and horrifies me. Next time? nope, I reply. next time, you get to tell me all about the childhood trauma that led to you becoming a sex worker. This is why I usually choose to have no friends. Fine. I’ll show you mine, since you showed me yours. Grinning, I tuck my phone back into my pocket and head for the car.